The Human Rights Commission (HRC) of Moscow is requesting the Moscow City Council make public bathrooms gender neutral.
The motion was sent to the city council, which is being analyzed to see if the action is feasible, if the city has money available to make the changes and if there are any additional restrictions in place. While HRC had been planning this request for some time, HRC of Moscow Chair Ken Faunce said an ad released by New St. Andrews College depicting and encouraging transphobia is what made the group jumpstart the process.
The advertisement depicts two people, one cisgender man and one cisgender woman, going into respective male and female restrooms. Text on the screen reads, “We’re not science majors but we know science even better than the supreme court.”
The ad ends with the statement “Accepting students who know the difference.”
“We have to hit on this because they have been using it as a selling point to promote anti-transgender ideas,” Faunce said.
Starting with Friendship Square and Moscow City Hall, Faunce theorizes some bathroom conversions could be as easy as removing urinals, adding a lock and changing the sign. However, other restrooms would require more renovations.
Funding for these changes would primarily come from Moscow’s city budget and the budget of the group which oversees the public bathroom. For example, a park bathroom could draw on the parks and recreation budget.
There is no motion for similar changes in Pullman, but Faunce said other groups are also supportive of gender-neutral bathrooms and combating transphobia on the Palouse. While gender-neutral bathrooms can greatly aid transgender and non-binary individuals, the bathrooms also benefit people who have children or a care attendant of a different sex than themselves.
Whatever changes the city council decides to make will be independent of any changes the University of Idaho decides to make to campus bathrooms. There are already 14 gender-neutral bathrooms located around campus.
Julia Keleher, the director of the UI LGBTQ office, provides input as requested on how to implement gender-neutral bathrooms as well as which buildings need gender-neutral bathrooms and why.
“We’ve kind of slowed down our talk of gender-neutral bathrooms on campus,” Keleher said. “(But) with the new building creations and new renovations, we are adding gender-neutral bathrooms on campus.”
UI’s gender-neutral bathrooms can be found on a map under the “Coming Out” tab of the LGBTQA office’s website.
The city council will begin reviewing the HRC’s request when the analysis is complete, which should be within the coming weeks. If passed, public gender-neutral bathrooms would begin to be converted and added in the following months.
Carter Kolpitcke can be reached at [email protected].